Commentary: Better land use policies could address Arlington's problems

By A. Michael Ruderman

Thursday

Dec 6, 2018 at 3:01 AM

This commentary appears in the Dec. 6 print edition of the Arlington Advocate. Opinion pieces are due by 9 a.m. on Monday to arlington@wickedlocal.com. Please keep letters to 400 words or less and include the name, street and phone number of author. Phone numbers are not published.

A lack of real affordable housing in Arlington. A historically expensive high school rebuilding project, in part because of the need to build non-classroom office space. Vacant commercial real estate that stays vacant because it doesn’t serve today’s needs. And a town budget that will not balance without another infusion of Proposition 2½-override cash.

Although it’s still months away, the pressing issues for the 2019 Annual Town Meeting are already here. Their common theme? The local economy. And, the presumption that this is “just the way things are”, that our budget has a “structural deficit”, and that we’re stuck with a commercial tax base that’s too small to give relief to residential homeowners.

Let’s look at three ways we can think differently about our land use policies to address these problems

Housing first. Menotomy Manor, owned and administered by our Housing Authority, comprises only 179 dwelling units across 7 acres of land. We need to accelerate the renovation of these post-World War II townhouses (already prescribed in our town’s Master Plan) and systematically replace townhouse with low-rise, three and four-story buildings. This is as close to an immediate effect as we can have on the current housing crisis, for the families and children who need it most. It’s far more effective than any “accessory apartments” plan which was previously rejected by Town Meeting.

The second proposal is for business revitalization. We’ve been trying to help commercial property owners modernize their assets by partially waiving requirements for parking, on lots too small to meet the number of spaces dictated in our bylaws. It hasn’t worked, as an engine of development—the benefits have been too small and scattered. And we, the town, haven’t profited from giving away that requirement of open and available access.

Let’s end that. Let’s use the laws of District Improvement Financing to transform our century-old business stock. We put a cash equivalency on the parking spaces that a developer can’t provide. We offer to waive all the parking, along carefully defined strips of our commercial corridors, where single story blocks abut mass transit lines, and where three and four story structures would not shade or loom over their residential neighbors. We incentivize redeveloping one-story storefronts into the mixture of retail, offices and apartments that today’s Arlington needs.

Can we ease the burden to recreate the office space that a new Arlington High School requires? Maybe, if we move quickly, in the next year or two. After that, we’ll still need more office space to attract the knowledge-centered businesses that drive our modern economy.

What to do about the lack of parking is then the third proposal. We can help all of our downtown businesses, long-standing and newly arrived, with more abundant parking. It’s time to draw construction plans for an above-ground parking structure in the Russell Common lot, and a finance plan that uses the parking equivalency fees above.

These proposals are a starting place for discussion, and they’ll need much work in developing them into action plans. But, that is what we have the professional managers in our town government for, and the talents of our planning department. All they’re waiting for is the mandate and the direction from us, the voters.

We can make a better economy in Arlington for everyone. Even if the problems have built up over years, and the solutions will take persistent effort—we have the knowledge, the people, and the tools. Mostly, we’ll need to think differently about what we can change, what we don’t have to accept.